Tags full report

About the coaches and draft picks: "These suspensions thus deprived the Saints of vitally important coaching and leadership talent, and they represented a severe competitive penalty for the Saints’ team, its fans and indirectly for the New Orleans / Gulf Coast region. Commissioner Goodell’s findings and the resulting suspensions of these Saints’ personnel are final and no longer subject to appeal."

I like these gems: "That investigation was obstructed in multiple ways by the Saints’ head coach, senior coaches and other team officials, including their instructing Hargrove to answer questions falsely, though it remains unclear what exactly Hargrove was asked by investigators regarding the Program."

"As a further complication, it is unclear exactly what NFL investigators asked Hargrove regarding the Program or any other alleged program and,thus, unclear whether he lied about the Program or the fact that it included cart-offs and knockouts."

So the NFL didn't know what it asked Hargrove, but that didn't matter, as NFL said his answers were lies, and the Saints told him to lie in response to said unknown questions. Good thing for Hargrove that Tags got involved, and he has to wonder if he might not have been cut but for the initial suspension.

More:

"This sad chapter in the otherwise praiseworthy history of the New Orleans Saints casts no executive, coach or player in a favorable light."

"Due to the indefensible obstruction of justice by Saints’ personnel, which included admitted efforts of coaches to mislead or otherwise deny the existence of a bounty or the Program, a disciplinary process that should have taken weeks is verging on three years."

Finally, on the bounty, Tags seems to be an instant replay ref needing indisputable evidence to overturn Goodell's finding:

"Evaluating the totality of the evidence, there is an insufficient basis to reject Commissioner Goodell’s findings on the offer of the Favre bounty."

But the alleged offer was enough because:

"There was no evidence that Vilma or anyone else paid any money to any player for any bounty-related hit on an opposing player in the Vikings game."

I hate that they are focusing on the entire "Program" as a whole instead of finding out whether or not there was intent to injure.

The severe penalties we were handed were largely because of the supposed encouraging of cart-offs/knockouts/injuries, which Goodell is so determined to prevent (for obvious reasons). I mean, everyone here knows that something fishy was going on, but is a "pay for performance" system deserving of losing draft picks, coaches, players, a whole season?!

Like, frick NFL, we get it. There was some kind of system within the organization that paid money to players for doing certain things. We fricking get that. Can you please just admit that there isn't enough evidence to prove an intent to injure so we can get our draft picks/coach back and move on from this shite.

quote:"Due to the indefensible obstruction of justice by Saints’ personnel, which included admitted efforts of coaches to mislead or otherwise deny the existence of a bounty or the Program, a disciplinary process that should have taken weeks is verging on three years."

But wait, I thought the punishments were because they didn't stop in 2010 when goodell supposedly told them to? I thought it only got brought up after the fact? But why did Fujita get suspended when he was even with the team....

quote:"Evaluating the totality of the evidence, there is an insufficient basis to reject Commissioner Goodell’s findings on the offer of the Favre bounty, but There was no evidence that Vilma or anyone else paid any money to any player for any bounty-related hit on an opposing player in the Vikings game."

quote:The matter before me involves appeals by four present or former New Orleans Saints’ players who are challenging findings of misconduct and disciplinary actions taken by Commissioner Roger Goodell on October 9, 2012. The players are Anthony Hargrove, Scott Fujita, Will Smith and Jonathan Vilma. The imposed discipline was the result of the National Football League’s (the “NFL”) investigation of allegations concerning a pay-for-performance program (the “Program”) conducted by the Saints during the 2009 through 2011 seasons to reward particular plays by Saints’ defensive players that ultimately incentivized rendering opposing players unable to play, and allegations concerning a specific bounty being placed on Brett Favre to injure him during the NFC Championship game against the Minnesota Vikings in January 2010.

So they're already trying to reframe the argument the argument because they are full of shite. There was no bounty program, there was a pay for performance program, and they think there was a bounty on Favre.

quote:"Evaluating the totality of the evidence, there is an insufficient basis to reject Commissioner Goodell’s findings on the offer of the Favre bounty, but There was no evidence that Vilma or anyone else paid any money to any player for any bounty-related hit on an opposing player in the Vikings game."